There's poetry in games, but you often have to look for it. Sometimes the place where you have to look is in the patch notes. Take this example, now justly famous, from Boiling Point: Road to Hell, an open-world action-adventure that, back in 2005, was going to propel Arnold Vosloo to even greater heights of fame and influence following a nuanced performance in The Mummy. "Fixed: size of the moon," it reads. "Fixed: jaguar floats across screen at treetop level." And elsewhere: "Police station cannot be destroyed by a crossbow anymore." Fixed!

Like much great poetry, there's a touch of sadness to it. The whole thing might conjure a wistful imagined dialogue in the reader's mind. "I've sorted out all this stuff," the poet says, and I reply, why? That stuff sounded amazing as it was. Never fix the size of the moon. Never fix the flying jaguars or the police stations that are just a bolt away from exploding. Let Arnold Vosloo run free and unfettered in the only kind of open world that's capable of holding him.

Boiling Point's the exception rather than the rule, of course, and not just in the manner that it's willing to rely on the star power of Vosloo. It's a video game that's truly elevated by its bugs. For most games, the bugs aren't quite so helpful. I don't know anyone who plays Battlefield 4 and thinks to themselves, "Hey, these glitches and physics disasters and random disconnects are really adding something interesting here. I dig this." Bugs ruin games and erode goodwill. Yet part of me still wonders if that always has to be the case. In fact, many years ago I stepped outside on a frosty evening, stared up at the moon (far too small for my liking) and made a solemn, Bruce Wayne-like promise to myself: I'm going to find a game that's enhanced by its bugs. I'm going to become the Big Bug Hunter. I'm going to find the perfect bug.

I'm kicking off this week with something that we didn't write a story about, but simply tweeted the moment we saw it because we thought it was so cool. It's an HTML5 Game Boy emulator written by New York-based programmer Ben Midi specifically to work with smartphones. It certainly runs beautifully on my iPhone 5 - others have said that it also functions perfectly well on their newer Androids.

All you have to do to make it work is type www.benmidi.com/gameboy into your browser, and hey presto! Your phone is now a Game Boy - complete with a nice selection of old classic games that includes one of my all-time faves, Tetris. The emulated Game Boy's buttons are a tad cramped in portrait mode, but in landscape mode there's plenty of room for your fingers to take you on a highly enjoyable cruise along memory boulevard.

Since this is the last Letter from America of 2013, I thought I'd do something a little different and invite the USgamer team to tell you about the stories they most enjoyed writing this year. Essentially, it's a retro-spectacular, best-of-USgamer-a-thon. So if you're sitting comfortably, let's begin.

Jeremy Parish (Senior Editor): I don't know that I've ever thrown more time, energy, effort, and passion into a single piece of writing knowing full well I'd be lucky if more than a handful of people bothered to read it than with the Umihara Kawase retrospective I put together at Tokyo Game Show this year. Indie Before It Was Cool: The Umihara Kawase Story is a feature I never thought I'd have the opportunity to write; in fact, it only happened because I made a request to interview Umihara Kawase creator Kiyoshi Sakai fully expecting a negative response. When I actually got a "yes", I felt slightly terrified at the prospect of meeting the man behind such a brilliant game. But neither could I turn down the opportunity, even if it meant taking a train ride an hour out from Tokyo in the midst of a busy trade show.

Even with Sony's confident $380 million buyout of Gaikai and the upcoming PlayStation 4 tie-in, cloud gaming remains a dubious prospect for core gamers. The performance of tech pioneer OnLive highlights the hitherto unresolved challenges: video compression kills image quality and input lag remains an issue. But what if we told you that OnLive has recently transformed significantly - for the better?

A recent update to the service - which arrived without any kind of fanfare - brings about serious enhancements to the service, for the time being available in the PC client only. There are new options including the ability to scale up image quality bandwidth up to 12mbps, plus there's a v-sync toggle and low-latency screen modes. The former is a huge boon to gamers with faster connections especially, but are these extras truly enough to put the image quality and latency issues to rights?

With this higher bandwidth setting open for use, we thought we'd see just how much of a leap it represents over the standard 5mbps rate. A 12mbps connection should go a long way towards alleviating macroblock artifacting issues common to OnLive, but considering the h.264-encoded stream is relaying a full 60FPS signal for most games, is this enough to produce a consistently smooth image? Utilising a fibre-optic line offering a download speed of 60Mbps, we play through a range of fast-moving shooters, fighters and racers to get an idea of where the changes come into effect.

"Technical challenges" are holding up the OnLive iPad app, the company has told Eurogamer.

The OnLive viewer app is available on the App Store, but the OnLive app, which was supposed to bring the full OnLive experience to Apple's fancy tablet, is yet to launch - some nine months after OnLive announced it.

New CEO of OnLive Charlie Jablonski told Eurogamer there were "technological challenges" with getting the app released, and that whatever the end product ends up providing, it will need to make business sense for Apple.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1517222Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:20:00 +0100Back from the dead: OnLive on what went wrong and what has to go right

That, we thought, was that. But OnLive survived. Investor Lauder Partners swooped in to grab the assets and cloud gaming tech on the cheap using a management buyout and re-hired half the staff. Now, the new OnLive is a leaner company, and, after understandable downtime, is back and wants you to know about it.

At Eurogamer Expo we sat down with the new CEO of OnLive Charlie Jablonski and UK boss Bruce Grove for a no holds barred interview on what went wrong and what has to go right for the cloud gaming company to re-establish itself as a viable business. And what does all the turmoil mean for OnLive customers? Read on to find out.

The announcement was made on the Mercenary Kings Kickstarter upon the game reaching its goal of $75,000. The current tally comes to $80,302 with seven days on the clock before its 13th September deadline.

All backers who pledged $15 or more for a Steam copy of the game will get an additional code for the Ouya version. This is presuming the Android-based console ends up supporting download codes, but Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman told Tribute Games that the plan is to do so.

OnLive's founder and former CEO Steve Perlman has departed the cloud gaming company he created following its acquisition by investor firm Lauder Partners.

According to the announcement, he left "to work on his myriad of other projects." It's unclear if he left on his own accord or if the new company's owners let him go. Perhaps he fired himself? We're looking into it.

"Steve has created an extraordinary company that no one else could have created," said new chairman and owner of the investor firm, Gary Lauder. "He is a unique entrepreneur and deserves his legendary status in Silicon Valley as a creator of groundbreaking companies."

"Steve continues as CEO and is currently concentrating on the transition; once this is complete, he'll be very focused on our next product releases and the vision," read a statement from OnLive PR to OnliveFans.

"There will be changes to the organization both with old and new OnLive staff that will be bringing new features and games to the service. There will be more announcements - both large and small, such as the arrival of the Vizio CoStar and the Ouya Kicktarter project, and stay tuned for major announcements coming soon."

Two years after launch, OnLive is bankrupt and under new ownership: employees have been fired, their shares in the fledgling cloud outfit are worthless, and the original start-up has ceased to exist. What remains in terms of infrastructure, technology and IP is has been bought out by venture capitalist Gary Lauder, with OnLive 2.0 carrying on where its predecessor left off, re-hiring less than half of the original staff in the process. From a user perspective, it seems to be business as usual, with all servers remaining in service. However, in light of the facts and figures that have emerged over the weekend, it's difficult to imagine a rosy future ahead for the service - and for cloud gaming in general.

Various accounts of what actually happened last Friday at OnLive's Palo Alto HQ have made their way into the press over the last couple of days - with Joystiq's version of events the most detail-rich. However, the general facts and figures seem broadly consistent across all accounts: OnLive was burning through a staggering $5m per month, running 8,000 game servers that were only being utilised by 1,800 concurrent users - at peak. This, from what OnLive says is an active userbase of 1.5m gamers.

It's a remarkably small number for a service that's over two years old, having burned its way through so much investor capital. To be brutally frank, its concurrent user stats suggest a platform that is a niche irrelevance compared to its established rivals. To illustrate, that 1,800 number across the OnLive platform compares unfavourably with EVE Online's 50,000 peak in the last 24 hours and Team Fortress 2's 111,000 users in the same time period.

In the battle of the cloud gaming companies Gaikai, headed up by Earthworm Jim designer Dave Perry, is the clear winner.

Last month Sony shelled out a whopping $300 million for the company. Last Friday OnLive collapsed, sacking half its staff and selling all its assets to a new investor amid reports of just 1800 concurrent users.

This morning, cloud gaming's star seems dimmed. But for Sony, proud owner of Gaikai, its belief in the potential for the tech remains unhindered.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1507640Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:22:00 +0100OnLive vows service will continue as new company owner revealed

OnLive has told its customers its service will continue uninterrupted as the company transitions to a new owner.

Over the weekend reports emerged that painted a bleak future for the cloud gaming company. Layoffs and claims of under just 1800 concurrent users revealed trouble inside the California start-up, which on Friday closed as part of an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors - a form of bankruptcy.

Now, it's issued a new statement responding to the speculation, and confirmed an affiliate of investment firm Lauder Partners has created a new company and bought all of OnLive's assets, which include technology, patents, trademarks and intellectual property.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1507611Mon, 20 Aug 2012 08:45:00 +0100OnLive lays off most of its staff, files for alternative to bankruptcy

Update: OnLive has issued the following statement (via The Verge), confirming the buyout:

"We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive's apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.'s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services."

"We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive's businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement."

Is cloud gaming the future? Sony certainly thinks so. It forked out $380 million on Gaikai, the cloud gaming service run by David Perry, to ensure PlayStation's future at least incorporates the cloud. Expect cloud gaming to form a part of the offering of PlayStation 4, the next Xbox and, probably, everything else gaming related since now.

And the data suggests so, too. It's no secret that sales of boxed, retail games have declined steadily over the last few years, having peaked in 2008. All the major video game publishers are desperately trying to increase the amount of money they make from digital sales. EA, for example, recently said it is "inevitable" that it will go 100 per cent digital in the future.

But what do others think? As the quality of experience offered by cloud gaming companies improved, will physical media go the way of the dodo? Or will there always be a place for cold, hard discs? We talked to Peter Molyneux, Valve, David Perry and more to find out.

OnLive lets you stream-play games on mobiles, tablets, PCs - pretty much any machine that loads a web browser. The games themselves run on faraway magical computers, and you control them via the internet.

You don't need to own a games console. You don't need to install things. Less clutter. Better Feng Shui.

But there's lag and latency! And more than there would be if you owned and played the game on a console at home.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1494084Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:24:00 +0100Civ 5 free with purchase of Gods and Kings expansion on Onlive
Civilization 5 is free for a limited time for those who purchase its Gods and Kings expansion on Onlive before Tuesday next week.

Purchase the add-on and you'll be given a PlayPass for unlimited access to the parent game. Ordinarily Civilization 5 and its expansion are $29.99 each, effectively making the bundle half off.

Onlive confirmed to us that the deal extends to the UK, where both Civilization 5 and the Gods and Kings expansion will be available 22nd June at 12:01 am BST.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1493861Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:49:00 +0100Darksiders 2, Aliens and Hitman among games heading to OnLive this year
At E3 today, cloud gaming service OnLive announced that a bunch of new games from the likes of Sega, THQ and Square Enix will be heading to its service this year.

The new games include Darksiders 2, Metro: Last Light and South Park from THQ, Hitman: Absolution from Square Enix and Aliens: Colonial Marines from Sega. The full list is below.

The company also unveiled its new MultiView feature, which allows players to use picture-in-picture display to see what their friends and team-mates are seeing and to communicate with them using text and voice chat.

OnLive doesn't do enough to convince us that cloud gaming is ready to be the next big thing, but the fact that it works as well as it does is undoubtedly a major technological achievement. The company has set the standard for "first gen" performance in this field, and it's now down to others to enter the market and compete. And that's exactly what upstart rival Gaikai has done - with intriguing results.

Although based on similar principles, the implementation is very different. OnLive launched with a full games service, while Gaikai specialises in offering playable demos with plans to expand beyond that when the time is right. OnLive uses widely spaced datacentres to address a large area, whereas Gaikai offers more servers closer to players. The technology behind the video compression is also very different, with OnLive using hardware encoders while Gaikai uses the x264 software running on powerful Intel CPUs.

Gaikai reckons its approach results in more responsive gameplay, better base visuals and superior video compression. So how can this be tested?

CCP is talking to Gaikai and OnLive - among others - about bringing their titles to the shiney-vision-of-the-future world of cloud-gaming.

"We are in dialogue with both companies and others," explained David Reid, chief marketing officer, in an interview with Eurogamer.

"We think it's a really important way to not just play the core Eve Online gameplay - that you do play today principally on the PC and on the Mac - but also to add new sorts of experiences - when you think about Planetary Interaction in Eve Online right?"

Early bird tickets will be available from www.eurogamerexpo.com at discounted rates until 1st June 2012. Check out the table below for pricing. Virgin Media customers can also purchase an exclusive discounted ticket for just £6. To find out more information on that and buy tickets, visit tickle.virginmedia.com.

This year we're able to offer options for full days, afternoons and early entry as well as the brand new Super Passes, which guarantee early entry for all four days of the show.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1436509Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:51:00 +0000Eurogamer Reader SurveyHello! We'd like to get to know you better so we can do a bunch of things that make the site better for you, including tailoring our editorial and reacting to your design preferences. If you have a few spare minutes, we'd be really grateful of your input in our annual survey. Everything's optional, but we really appreciate any thoughts you take the time to share.

Yes! Welcome to episode 94 of the Eurogamer.net Podcast! As the year grinds to a halt, it's time to reflect on the games that have made suffering the internet bearable. But it's not all about working out which game is better than that other game and putting it into a list. Sometimes, it's about the NEWS.

One of those sometimes is this time, so we've prepared a very special end of year special podcast that is all sorts of special, and also a quiz. Senior staff writer Robert "Bertie" Purchese asks the questions, does funny impressions and has no idea what the score is. Eurogamer news editor Wesley "bulls**t" Yin-Poole, US news editor Fred Dutton (who just got off the plane from Baltimore) and website and video administrator and writer wizard Tom "I don't need HD graphics or Achievements to enjoy Zelda" Phillips answer the questions, recounting the biggest stories from one of the most tumultuous years in video gaming history.

Who can forget the PSN hack? Or Geohot jailbreaking the PS3? Or the Nintendo 3DS price cut? Or the Xbox Live hack-oh no wait that was phishing and there is definitely NO EVIDENCE OF A HACK!? We can't. That's why we're on the quiz.

UPDATE: Voting is now closed for this year's Eurogamer Readers' Top 50 Games! You can still use the form below but your input will no longer count towards the totals. It's a bit like watching X Factor on a Wednesday, if you like. Look out for the final Top 50 list to do up on 1st January 2012!

ORIGINAL POST: It's almost the end of the year and it is high time we found out what you think are the best games of the past 12 months. As is tradition, we are asking you to name your top five games and give us a bit of commentary on why they meant so much to you. We'll then take that information and combine it to create a representative list of the Eurogamer readership's Top 50 Games of 2011, which we'll publish on 1st January 2012 along with a selection of your comments.

There are no wrong answers and no prizes (if you must have prizes, have a crack on our 12 Days of Christmas Xbox Giveaway), and if you feel there are games missing from the voting forms then please get in touch by email or Twitter and if they should be on there (i.e. they were released during 2011) we will amend for you.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1428089Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:51:00 +0000OnLive would "love" to talk with MS and Sony about getting its tech into the next Xbox and PS4

Cloud gaming company OnLive would "love" to talk with Microsoft and Sony about incorporating its tech in the next generation of consoles.

"If they decide they want to use our technology, that would be a great discussion because we've already got the infrastructure," he said. "We know how to do it. There are a lot of things we could bring to the table and they could bring to the table. It would certainly be a discussion we would love to have. It would be very interesting.

OnLive, the streaming gaming service, is rolling out on tablet devices from today.

Free Android and iPad apps will launch according to mobile app store certifications from 2am Thursday 8th December. The Android app works with the Amazon Kindle Fire in the US and will do so in the UK when the device launches on these shores.

The new client brings the full OnLive experience to tablet devices, using existing payment options and working with the entire catalogue of nearly 200 titles. One OnLive version of a game works across all devices, with cloud saving intact.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1427718Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:07:00 +0000Lord of the Rings: War in the North demo released exclusively on OnLive

The demo for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North has been released exclusively on OnLive.

War in the North is the co-op, action RPG that tells a story parallel to that of The Lord of the Rings book and films.

To try the demo, either download the small, free OnLive client for PC and Mac, or go through the OnLive Game System console.

It's a role-playing game, when you get down to it. Not just because you gain XP, engage in a little light levelling and are free to sharpen your combat skills one upgrade at a time. It's a role-playing game in the most literal sense of the phrase, a game in which you're encouraged to give in to the fantasy, and to see what life is like when it's composed of rooftop brawls and zip-line getaways. Animations, traversal mechanics, takedowns: they're all building towards the same thing. In Arkham City, you become Batman.

And it's an easy role to play, partly because Arkham Asylum already laid out such an excellent framework, delivering not just the power of the Dark Knight but also his cunning and his tightly controlled rage. And partly because, if you're like me, you've secretly been Batman since primary school anyway.

Pretending a series of bedrooms and attics were subterranean strongholds. Daydreaming of dangling cyclists over the ledges of skyscrapers when they rode their freakin' bikes on the sidewalk. Promising to avenge your parents' deaths, even though they were still alive and well and sat in the next room, arguing about why the Morris Minor wouldn't start that morning.

At points, Orcs Must Die! made me angrier than Dark Souls, which has got to be some sort of achievement. A third-person take on tower defence that mixes trap-laying with simple blasting and melee combat, it's a deeply charming game with a difficulty curve that veers wildly and a toolset that's half pot luck and half brilliance.

You play an apprentice mage who's tasked with keeping waves of Orcs, Ogres and other beasties out of the 'rifts' in each level. Huge groups of enemies spawn from fixed locations and run along predetermined paths towards them. If too many get to the rift, you lose. To stop the horde you have an initially limited set of traps and personal weapons, which rapidly expands into a huge grab bag of troops, whirring blades and smooshing contraptions perfect for turning green mobs into pesto.

You're given as much time as necessary at the start of levels to scope them out on foot and place traps, identifying bottlenecks and environmental hazards that will maximise your weapons. Traps cost cash, anywhere from 200 glowing blue money points (they don't seem to have a name) up to thousands, and killing enemies grants from 10 to hundreds depending on toughness - all self-explanatory enough.

Having dominated the mainstream media last week after what can only be described as a hugely successful UK debut at the Eurogamer Expo, OnLive has finally arrived in the UK, offering nigh-on instant access to a range of over 100 games via the technological magic of cloud gaming.

We all know the score: OnLive reckons that the age of owning your own gaming hardware is coming to an end and that the future is all about streaming gameplay video across the internet from secure datacentres, with "dumb terminal" clients beaming back your joypad, mouse or keyboard commands. There's no need to buy new console or PC hardware - the servers will be upgraded instead - and the vision is for OnLive to become almost like gaming's equivalent to the MP3 player: a compressed, compromised, not quite as good as the full-fat product, but more than good enough for the mainstream.

Or is it? Digital Foundry took the US launch for a spin 14 months ago and came away impressed with the potential and the achievements in battling latency, but we didn't think much of the pricing structure or indeed the performance or image quality.

Game streaming service OnLive launched in the UK at the Eurogamer Expo last week. We've been running two tests of it since. This review, conducted by Dan at home, approaches it from the perspective of the man in the street. On Saturday, we'll present a full technical performance analysis by Digital Foundry's Rich Leadbetter.

Live gameplay, streamed directly to your home. Instant access to the latest games, with no downloads or installation. You press a button, and a computer hundreds (even thousands) of miles away responds instantly. It sounds like science fiction, but OnLive is now up and running in the UK, so we can finally put the claims to the test in a real-life domestic setting. Are we witnessing the majestic birth of a new era in cloud-based gaming, or a clumsy newborn that needs time to find its feet?

OnLive is live. The game streaming service is now available for the first time outside the US, here in the UK.

It's already come a long way from the 18 games it launched with some 15 months ago. The UK launch line-up is very close to the current American service, with some 100 games freely available on the flat-rate 'PlayPack' offering, and a further 50 premium 'PlayPass' games - typically newer releases - available for purchase or short-term rental.

Our announcement story has the full details of the UK launch, but here are the headlines: PlayPack costs £6.99 a month, but BT is offering three months for free to its broadband customers. PlayPack also gives you 30 per cent off the price of PlayPass purchases. OnLive is offering your first PlayPass purchase for £1, and setting up an account, with access to the game viewer and demos, is free from the OnLive site.

OnLive has confirmed pricing details for its cloud gaming service, which goes live in the UK this week.

Available from today, the OnLive Game System itself will set you back £69.99 and includes one controller and HDMI cable. However, if you're heading down to the Eurogamer Expo this weekend you'll be able to grab a set for free while stocks last.

You'll be able to pick up your first individual game for £1, with titles then retailing from between £1.99 and £39.99.

How did we imagine the future when we were growing up? Hoverboards? Holographic 3D television projections? The Jetsons whizzing by outside the window? All very disappointing really, but if we'd known then what we know now, we'd probably have settled for a lot less clutter and cabling around the house. With OnLive making its European debut this September, we're taking one step closer to that long overdue future.

OnLive is a new cloud computing service that delivers games directly to your PC, television or tablet. All the hard work of processing your games and delivering them straight to your living room is taken on by OnLive's server clusters. (Picture the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey but dedicated to lag-free, high-definition gaming and you're probably on the right track.)

If you've found yourself itching to upgrade your PC but can't justify the cost, OnLive beams the latest games into your home without the need for terrifying, expensive hardware tinkering. If you prefer to play your games with your feet up on the sofa, OnLive's tiny console replaces your hardware collection with one compact device.